Are You Losing Sleep Over Losing Sleep?

What is Insomnia?

A good night’s sleep is vital for our health yet cancer treatments can affect our ability to sleep soundly. Up to half of all cancer patients experience insomnia: the inability to fall asleep and stay asleep. This can go on for months or even years.

Signs you are experiencing insomnia:

Do you wake up groggy, sluggish and find it hard to start your day?

After waking up in the morning, could you fall back asleep a couple of hours later?

Are you unable to function without caffeine before noon?

If you didn’t set an alarm clock, would you sleep past that time?

What causes cancer-related insomnia?

Understanding the internal and external factors that can disturb sleep is the first step in restoring balance to sleep patterns. Some of the main culprits are:

Psychological Stressors. The most common triggers of insomnia are worry and anxiety. After a cancer diagnosis, it’s normal that the mind races and it can be hard to turn it off.

Treatment and Treatment-Related Symptoms. Some chemotherapy protocols and prescriptions can act as stimulants. Doctors, nurses and pharmacists are familiar with these side effects, so ask if your insomnia could be related to your treatments.

Pain. If you are in pain before you fall asleep, falling asleep is more difficult.

Tobacco, Alcohol and Caffeine Intake.Nicotine in tobacco is a stimulant and can cause very light sleep.Alcohol is a sedative which can cause sleep cycles to be disrupted and suppress deep REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep. REM sleep is critical restorative sleep.Caffeine overrides the body’s urge to sleep and tricks you into feeling alert and awake. Caffeine has a half-life of 5-7 hours. So having coffee with dinner at 7pm means 50% of the caffeine will be in your body until 12pm, and the remaining half even longer.

Here are some expected (and unexpected) sources of caffeine that can affect sleep:

Coffee, black tea and green tea

Colas and diet colas

Other soft drinks like Mountain Dew, Barq’s Root Beer and Sunkist

Decaffeinated coffee and tea (most herbal teas contain no caffeine)

Chocolate, including chocolate ice cream (the darker the chocolate, the more caffeine)

Mocha, or coffee-flavored ice cream or candy

Weight loss pills; they rely on caffeine to speed up metabolism

Any beverage marketed as an energy drink like Red Bull; even Vitamin Water Energy has caffeine

Why is addressing insomnia so important?

Insomnia takes a toll on our already-compromised immune systems. Evidence suggests that getting less than 8 hours sleep a night can more than double the risk of cancer over time. And sleeping only 4 hours a night can reduce our natural killer cell counts by 70%. Lack of sleep can also create inflammation throughout the body, one of the root causes of cancer.

On the flip side, 8 hours of restful sleep can help promote recovery and enable us to recharge physically and mentally.

Sleep helps tissues repair themselves, and organs to clear out toxins

Sleep enables us to remain composed in stressful situations (recovering from cancer is a very stressful situation)

The inability to get a good night’s sleep can leave us feeling drained, exhausted and overwhelmed, especially during cancer treatment and in its aftermath. Insomnia can make it difficult to engage with family and friends, to attend our medical appointments and to take care of ourselves throughout the day.

What concrete steps can we take to address Insomnia?

The reasons for our insomnia can change over time. And if you struggle with insomnia, no single activity is likely to address the problem. You will need to find the combination that works for you best.

MEND’s founder Lisa Lefebvre says, “For me, it’s going to a hot yoga class as often as I can, installing light dimmers throughout my house, making sure I sleep in a cool room, putting blue-light blockers on all my screens, and everyday use of a sleep supplement (not just on nights I can’t sleep).”

Everyday tips

Make sure you go to bed and wake up at the same time every day to establish a natural body rhythm. Our bedtimes should be early enough to allow 8-9 hours sleep a night. Data shows that having regular sleep/wake hours is the single most effective way to improve sleep.

Install dimmers switches in your home. If you can’t afford to do it in every room, at least attend to your bathroom, hallway and bedroom. And use them. Nature dims the world for bedtime with a sunset. Emulate this in your home. Many of us don’t realize how jarring bright overhead lights can be to a body that needs to ready itself for sleep. “I find that even a temporary exposure to bright light before bedtime can interrupt my ability to fall asleep,” says Lisa.

Also, change lightbulbs in sleeping areas to warm-toned models. Most energy-saving LED lightbulbs emit cooler, blue light that interferes with our production of melatonin – the hormone that tells us it’s time for bed. Instead, install bulbs appropriate for PM use.

Change your bedroom scenery. If we’ve been bedridden for a while but are now in recovery mode, our bodies may still associate our surroundings with illness. I found it helpful to repaint my bedroom walls, rotate the artwork I had been staring at for months, and change up my bedding and pajamas. Getting distance from those visual triggers created a more positive mood which translated into more restful sleep. This is a great task to share with loved ones who want to help you but don’t know how.

Tips for waking hours

Don’t consume any of the caffeinated foods or beverages listed above

Exercise every day, even if it’s a 15-minute walk. Exercise is nature’s way of wearing us out – in a good way. If you’ve just finished treatments, it’s hard to imagine exercising again. Get your family and friends involved: the next time someone asks what they can do to help, ask them to exercise with you. Plus, getting regular exposure to daytime sun also contributes to sleep at night.

Try a hot yoga class. Lisa attributes a large part of her recovery and ongoing health to her hot yoga practice. It hits everything in one 90-minute session including strength-building, flexibility, cardio, meditation and detoxification. And because of the heat, it burns 600-800 calories in one session, which creates fatigue at bedtime.

Avoid smoking and drinking. This may be easier said than done, but with a chronic sleep problem, it might be time to take a hard look at these sleep-destroying habits. At the very least, try not to smoke or drink after dinnertime.

Be like Goldilocks. To sleep soundly, our stomachs want to be not too hungry, and not too full, just the right amount of satisfied.

Tips for bedtime

Go to bed pain free. Don’t grin and bear it, address it. For Lisa, it’s taking two Tylenol about an hour before bed if her pain is acute that day. Other things you can do: take prescription pain medications on time or use special pillows to take pressure off sensitive points on our bodies. The bottom line is that we sleep better and our bodies recover faster if we’re not in pain.

Avoid devices several hours before bedtime. Computer, phone and tablet LED screens are all stimulants because they emit blue light, which is only naturally emitted by the sun in the middle of the day. As a result, blue light tricks your body into thinking it’s daytime. If you must use your device, download a blue light blocker here and you can participate in a short sleep study run by Dr. Steven Lockley of Harvard Medical School. This will give you data on your sleep patterns to help you self-assess.

Avoid drinking fluids after 8pm, especially for those of us who tend to wake up in the middle of the night to use the restroom. A recent Ivy League study found that carbonated beverages irritate bladders and can cause us to wake up more often in the middle of the night.

Take a pre-bed shower or bath. Water is a natural relaxant and temperature-neutralizing agent. To sleep soundly, our internal body temperature needs to drop 2-3 degrees, as if we were sleeping in nature. A shower or bath dissipates heat from the surface of our skin, helping cool our body’s core for sleep.

Avoid taking a prescription sleep aid. A sleep aid like Ambien can knock us out for a kind of “fake sleep”, but blocks full restorative sleep. That means our bodies can’t go into full repair mode, which in turn slows down the healing process. Another downside to prescription sleep aids: they are highly addictive. If you absolutely must take one, speak to your health care team about how to use it appropriately to avoid addition.

Try a natural sleep aid instead. Here’s one we created specifically for insomnia. Insider tip: sleep supplements work best if you take them every evening because their goal is to balance your body’s biochemistry, which takes time.

Journal your day. Too much unproductive mind chatter can keep us awake. By recording the events of our day, we process anxious moments and empty our minds before we close our eyes. Try not to journal in bed. Find a comfortable chair or other corner of your home that can be specifically for writing to create a physical separation between journaling space and sleep space.

Try a homeopathic spray. Although there is virtually no scientific literature that demonstrates homeopathy works, Lisa has found Sprayology’s Stress Relief and Sleep Ease products to be unexpectedly helpful.

Try aromatherapy. Lavender is one essential oil highly associated with sleep. Find one you like and use it regularly before bedtime to create a ritual and scent that your body associates with sleep.

Use earplugs to block out unwanted noise in your house or neighborhood. You can get earplugs at any drug store. Many don’t work well so try a few types, including the silicone version. Insider tip: If you use foam ear plugs, one road-warrior trick is to wet them first so they create an extra tight seal when they expand.

Close curtains to shut out street lamps or other artificial stimulus. Blackout curtains are a smart investment to help you fall and stay asleep. Or try a sleep mask.

Read before bed. This helps reorient the mind away from worries and stimulate the imagination. Avoid reading on topics like work or health which may trigger stress.

Listen to sleep meditation tapes. Belleruth Naparstek is a psychotherapist and social worker whose Health Journeys meditation recordings are well known and respected amongst the oncology and psychotherapist communities.

Troubleshooting

Don’t lie in bed awake. If you can’t fall asleep after 30 minutes, get up and try a relaxing activity until you feel sleepy. Read (remember no screens), or take a shower if you haven’t already.

See a cognitive behavioral health therapist with expertise in sleep disorders. Search for a CBTI therapist in your area or check out our listing of options in our test markets.

Seek out an EMDR therapist who can help process any underlying anxieties. EMDR therapists use a unique combination of talk therapy and physical stimulation. We’re big fans.

Read Why We Sleep for further tips. We love this New York Times bestseller. It’s an interesting read, full of whys, tips and tricks.

How can friends, family, colleagues to help?

Do you sleep with a cancer patient and snore? See your doctor and get the condition addressed. It’s likely affecting the health of both you and your companion.

Agree to sleep in a cooler, darker room even if you prefer warmer, sunnier rooms.

Arrange for an electrician to install dimmers throughout your house. (Lisa has one on every switch and finds it makes a big difference).